Speaking of profit... (Destiny)

by narcogen , Andover, Massachusetts, Monday, November 04, 2019, 09:30 (1851 days ago) @ Ragashingo

This sword is sold through the Bungie Store, so all profit goes to charity, right?

This is non-transparent, though.

Bungie gets to decide internally what their cost is for their portion of the sword, if any.

I don't mean to sound conspiratorial on this point, or to allege any malfeasance, but a lot of people think "oh this purchase goes to charity" they mean the whole purchase price goes to charity.

Or they imagine, as they usually do, that the profit margin on many products is very high, and that therefore a good portion of the purchase price is going to charity.

There's a third party involved in the production of props like that, and their take includes both their cost and their margin.

Bungie itself I'm sure assigns some internal cost figure to that, and when those two elements are combined, the remainder is the "profit" that's assigned to charity.

Even if Bungie were entirely conscientious and transparent on those figures, the upshot would still be, depending on how they assign costs, that merch subsidizes the game and incentivizes the production of more merch and disencentivizes the less profitable work of... you know, making the game... even with some taken off the top for charity.